colleagues. The motives already mentioned lead to this reserve, and still less permit me to open myself to them at the present moment. I shall then endeavour, citizen, to give you a clue to all the measures of which the common dispatches give you an account, and to discover the true causes of the explosion, Ref 047 which it is obstinately resolved to repress with great means, although the state of things has no longer any thing alarming.”
Notwithstanding the unequivocal expressions contained in this paragraph, the vindicator has endeavoured at a satisfactory explanation of it, and so confident does he pretend to be of having succeeded, that he says:—
“I hesitate not to pronounce, that he who feels a due abhorrence of party manœuvres will form a conclusion honourable to myself.”
Let us see, then, how he has extricated himself; what proof or what argument he has produced to wipe away the stigma, and to warrant the confidence with which he expresses himself of the people’s forming a conclusion to his honour.
The phrase of the first paragraph of citizen Fauchet’s letter which more immediately attracts our attention, is the “precious confessions of Mr. Randolph.” These words the vindicator has taken a deal of pains to explain away, and with his usual success. He begins by saying, that
“This observation upon the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph involves the judicious management of the office. It implies no deliberate impropriety, and cannot be particularly answered, until particular instances are cited.”
I see nothing here from which we are to form a conclusion to his honour; nor did he, it seems, for he immediately throws the task on citizen Fauchet’s certificate. This extra diplomatic instrument was obtained by the famous journey to Rhode-Island, under what circumstances we shall see by-and-by; at present let us hear what citizen Fauchet says in it:—
“As to the communications which he (Mr. Randolph) has made to me at different times, they were only of opinions, the greater part, if not the whole of which, I have heard circulated as opinions. I will observe here, that none of his conversations with me concluded without his giving me the idea that the President was a man of integrity, and a sincere friend to France. This explains in part (well put in) what I meant by the terms, his precious confessions. When I speak in the same paragraph in these words: ‘Besides the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph alone cast upon all which happens a satisfactory light,’ I have still in view only the explanations of which I have spoken above; and I must confess, that very often I have taken for confessions, what he might have communicated to me by virtue of a secret authority. And many things which I had, at the first instant, considered as confessions, were the subject of public conversation.”
Without admitting, even for a single moment, the validity of the evidence of this certificate, we may be permitted to admire its effrontery. Precious confessions are here explained to signify opinions, and opinions, too, that were the subject of public conversation! Oh! monstrous! Oh! front of tenfold brass! Were we to give credit to what citizen Fauchet has endeavoured to palm upon us in this certificate, we must conclude him to be either drunk or mad at the time of writing the paragraph which he thus explains, and the rest of his letter by no means authorizes such a conclusion. What idea do the words precious confessions convey to our minds? What is a confession? An acknowledgment which some one is prevailed on to make. And in what sense do we ever apply the epithet precious, but in that of valuable, rare, costly or dear? Would any man, that knows the meaning of these words, apply them to designate the common chat of a town, mere newspaper topics? We say, for instance, precious stones; but do we mean by these the rocks that we see cover the lands, or the flints and pebbles that we kick along the road? If some impudent quack were to tell us, that the pavement of Philadelphia is composed of precious stones, should we not hurl them at his head; should we not lapidate him?
But, let us see in what sense citizen Fauchet employs the same word precious, in another place, even in the very certificate where he endeavours to explain it to mean nothing. After speaking of the secret machinations of Mr. Hammond, the conspirations of the English, and their being at the bottom of the Western insurrection, he comes to the means that Mr. Randolph had proposed to get at their secrets, and says,
“I was astonished that the Government itself did not procure for itself information so precious.”
Here, then, precious signifies secret. This information so precious, was rare information; information not to be come at without a bribe. This phrase fallen from the pen of citizen Fauchet, while his invention was upon the rack, to explain away another charge against the moral Mr. Randolph, fully proves in what sense he had ever used the word precious.
However, we should be very far from doing justice to these “precious confessions of Mr. Randolph,” by considering them in their naked, independent sense. It is very rarely that the true meaning of any phrase, or even of a complete sentence, is to be come at without taking in the context. That these precious confessions were neither so trifling nor of so public a nature as the citizen would make us believe, is clear from the tenor of the whole first paragraph above transcribed, which Mr. Randolph forgot to beg his friend to explain. After having mentioned the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, “these,” says he, “I have not yet communicated to my colleagues.” And why?—“Because,” adds he, “the motives, already mentioned, lead to this reserve, and still less permit me to open myself to them at the present moment.” How is this, then? Why was this cautious reserve necessary, even towards his colleagues of the legation, if there was nothing to communicate but mere “opinions,” that were “the subject of public conversation?” What an over-and-above close man this must have been! Would to God, Mr. Randolph had been as close! But what were these “motives already mentioned?” We must consult the paragraph again here. The citizen, after stating that he allowed the dispatches, signed by his colleagues, to be confined to a naked recital of events, scarcely exceeding what might be gathered from the newspapers, observes, that he has reserved to himself the task of giving a key to these joint reports, and adds: when it comes in
“question to explain the secret views of a foreign government, it would be imprudent to give oneself up to men, whose known partiality for that government, and similitude of passions and interests with its chiefs, might lead to confidences, the issue of which is incalculable.”
Here we have the motives that prevented citizen Fauchet from communicating the precious confessions to his colleagues. Ordinary information, hardly exceeding what was to be learnt from the gazettes, he suffered them to participate; but as to the secret views of the Government, and the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, he kept them in his own breast; because his colleagues were men
“who had a known partiality for the Government, and a similitude of passions and interests with its chiefs!”
This reason for not trusting the colleagues of citizen Fauchet, is corroborated by a sentence of Mr. Randolph himself, who certainly forgot what he was about when he wrote it.
“Two persons,” says he, “were in commission with Mr. Fauchet, and it was suspected, from a quarter in which I confided, that these persons were in a political intimacy with members of our Government, not friendly to me.”
I am sure the reader will agree with me, that this was a reason, and a substantial one too, for not communicating to them the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, if those confessions went to expose the secret views of the Government; but, if, on the contrary, they went no further than “opinions,” that were “the subject of public conversation,” the precaution was perfectly ridiculous. It was like the secret of the idiot, who, whispering a by-stander, told him the sun shined, but begged him to let it go no further.
In short all the parts of this account correspond so exactly, that they only want to amount to a proof of innocence instead of guilt, to render them a subject of pleasing contemplation. Citizen Fauchet receives certain precious confessions from Mr. Randolph, which he keeps from his colleagues, because they have a partiality for the Government, and because, from their intimacy with some of the members of it, they might make dangerous discoveries. The inevitable conclusion then is, that these precious confessions were not of opinions, that were the subject of public conversation, and that they were of a nature hostile to the Government; and